Will Durant was an American historian, philosopher, and writer. He is best known for his work The Story of Civilization, which he wrote with his wife ARIEL Durant. WILL Durant was born in North Adams, Massachusetts in 1885 and died in 1981. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1968. ARIEL Durant was born in Proskurov, Ukraine in 1898 and died in 1981. She was a Russian-born American writer and co-author of The Story of Civilization with her husband WILL Durant.